Language Learning History

Hello,

To make my blog a little more personal, I wrote an essay on the language learning history of my life so far. I will talk about the things that I have learned so far and what my experiences with English are, and there are some experiences which I rather forget, but I will also talk about the things that I expect to learn at the university and already learned.

I started to learn English when I was around 8 or 9 years old. It was at the primary school in Zwolle, the Netherlands, they started with really basic things and it wasn’t useful because most of the things they teach,  I already knew. Probably  I learned that words and sentences from the television and from the traveling in foreign countries with my parents . So it was a begin, but a rather limited one.

At the secondary school it changed, we had to learn English on a different level. First of all they started with learning the grammar of English which I found very hard. We had to make an small exam once every 2 months, this were exams were you only had to learn translations from both English-Dutch and Dutch-English. This made it very easy to get a good grade, because you only had to study these words. But this was only the first year.

After the first year they started to focus more and more on the grammar of English, but unfortunately we had another teacher than previous year. His way of learning me English was totally different than previous year. He started that we only were allowed to speak English during the lessons, so when you had a question you first had to think how you could translate it into English. I found this was a very good way to learn English better and to improve my vocabulary. I was wondering why we didn’t do it previous year during lessons, but we had to keep going on. Of course we had to write letters and started giving presentations during the years, so my vocabulary was still improving. Still had some problems with English grammar and decided to get some extra lessons in English after school. This helped, but after a while I found out that my reading skills weren’t so good.

Eventually I reached my final year of the secondary school and I hoped I should graduate and already saw myself walking at the university. After a lot of nerves the told me, I had failed in graduating the secondary school. Disappointing as it was, couldn’t change anything more, because I didn’t had a resit I just failed.  After they showed me my results it appeared that I failed because of my  English exam, which I made horrible.
So just study one extra year to pass English.

One year later..

After the failure of last year this year I graduate, unfortunately not with a good grade for English but because my other grades were better and I passed.  After this negative experience with English, I was thinking. Apparently my English wasn’t so good, even after one year extra I hadn’t passed my English exam with a good grade. However I was able to go to the university. A lot of people didn’t understood my choice of my study, because my English was worse and I choose a study which is given in English.
I made my choice because I thought when I talked English every day and learn in English always, that It should be a matter of time for my English was good enough.  

My expectations before I came to university was that I should give presentations, learn and speak English for the total length of my study. My expectations where correct. Is turned out that it was just what I expected. I learned a lot of all my presentations and  writing assignments I had to make during  the lessons. Still the formal English and Academic English is still difficult but I’m don’t worry about it, because I think I’m capable of learning it.

So this are my experiences with English both positive and negative ones but from both I learned something.
but when I have to give advice to next-year students I would so just practice a lot, not only with speaking English but also with writing and reading. When you level of English is already at a higher level when you start at the university it would probably be a lot easier to pass all courses.

So thank you for reading and I hope you learned something from it.